151–160 of 524 posts
It's incredibly expensive to have the population increase this fast.
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Good find, I admit I had jumped on the Thames Water is Evil bandwagon, and for the record they are evil, but in this case they have been out-eviled by that other driver of British societal regression: > Campaigners had fought the plan, claiming there was no need for such a large reservoir and that it would damage the environment. > Leader of the Vale of White Horse Council Tony de Vere said: "We are delighted with th…
> Local residents were very worried about the impact of such a large reservoir Was it the crocodiles or the immigrants in small boats in the reservoir they worried about most?
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> Water should never have been privatised. At least not without a framework for a national strategy for water. But one can make a very fair argument where you can have a strong regulatory framework to ensure investment goals, exit clauses, and penalties in case of missing goals, no?
That never happens because the appointed regulator has no incentive to efficiently and effectively regulate, either.
I'm not a free market absolutist or a privatization zealot, but I'm curious about the fact that England cannot come up with a privatization model that ensures clawback and exit clauses, measurable goals, and a clear investment plan for it.
Even Brazil 5 years ago made a Law for the universalization of water and sewage. The goals are given in a clear-cut way:
> The Sanitation Framework standardizes deadlines and criteria nationwide: by 2033, 99% of the population must have access to water. Today, 30 million Brazilians still lack this service. The country also needs to achieve 90% access to sewage collection and treatment, a service currently not provided to 90 million Brazilians. Furthermore, water losses must be reduced from the current 40% to 25%. [1]
> Since 2020, 59 auctions have been held in 20 states, benefiting 1,529 municipalities and more than 73 million people. The contracts provide for R$178 billion in direct investments and R$56.9 billion in concession fees, totaling more than R$234.9 billion committed to the sector (for the private investment). [2]
There the responsibility for water distribution and sewage is within municipalities, and the biggest issue is that small ones cannot finance such a kind of service that demands high upfront investment and maintenance costs.
The point that I want to make here, is that the biggest issue might be the lack of enforcement and regulatory effectiveness, plus bad legal framework and contracts.
[1] - https://www12.senado.leg.br/noticias/materias/2025/09/04/san....
[2] - https://www.gov.br/cidades/pt-br/assuntos/noticias-1/noticia...
As the article mentions, privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources. What the article doesn’t mention is that pre-privatisation a new reservoir was built every year up to about 1960 and then every few years until privatisation in 1992. So we are about 30 years behind in adding capacity to the system. This combined with the inadequate levels of i…
I was fascinated on my recent trip to the UK to learn how much of their infrastructure they'd privatized semi-recently. Trains, hm, well it kinda works in Japan so maybe not so bad, but, water and SEWAGE??? In what universe does it make sense to have one of the most critical infrastructure systems, the backbone of health for a city, participate in a marketplace? Insanity. Not to mention the fact that at the end of th…
And we Brits don't revolt – even protesting is highly legally-risky these days.
Is there a better country to do such things? I don't think so
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Don't think so, it's not mentioned separately on my CT bill at least. However I rent in a new build block of flats so maybe it doesn't apply to me, or is included in rent.
For Fife the charges are here: https://www.fife.gov.uk/kb/docs/articles/housing/council-tax...
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That's just England though. Scotland has 70 people per km^2. Water is also "free". Free as in, it's part of your council tax and all water is nationalised. You do not buy it from a private company. I would prefer it was metered so companies that use a lot of water are charged commensurately. Council tax in itself is a regressive tax, so adding water charges to that makes things worse.
Yes, but I think it's the population density of the densely populated regions that matters. It's not like they're bringing water from Scotland to England by pipeline.
England's population has been rising far faster than it would naturally rise due to immigration. This means giant sums of money need to be borrowed to fund capital-intensive projects including new energy and water sources. They haven't been done enough on the water side. It's incredibly expensive to have the population increase this fast.
Population growth in the UK is roughly in line with other developed countries. The past few years have been a bit choppy due to global events like the pandemic, but the UK is not an outlier in its population growth.
As the article mentions, privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources. What the article doesn’t mention is that pre-privatisation a new reservoir was built every year up to about 1960 and then every few years until privatisation in 1992. So we are about 30 years behind in adding capacity to the system. This combined with the inadequate levels of i…
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I think you are misrepresenting Thatcherism. Thatcher was pretty pragmatic and did not want to privatise everything - e.g. Royal Mail and the Post Office - those were done by the very non-Thatcherite coalition government in 2013. They were also messed up (e.g. private ownership of the postcode database). https://www.ft.com/content/1057f722-75d5-11e1-9dce-00144feab... A lot of NHS privatisation was done by Blair and B…
It's the problem with ideological thinking - from what I can see some privatisations worked well (e.g. Rolls Royce) and others went terribly (rail, water in England) - unfortunately they tend to get treated as all bad or all good.
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Desalinating water requires a lot of energy and equipment. Seawater must be tapped, filtered and passed through membranes in a process called reverse osmosis. All of this requires lot of electrical power, large pumps, cleaning, corrosion-resistant materials, etc. Desalination is generally the last resort when there are no other options. It is much simpler, more efficient and less expensive to properly manage freshwat…
It obviously doesn't work, desalination works.
Great Britain is not an oil rig or a desert devoid of fresh water. It does not have cheap energy such as natural gas to produce electricity at low cost. Nor is it Israel, which has only the Jordan River and reuses every litre of water two to three times.
The UK has chosen to delegate the maintenance of its water and sanitation network to private operators who chronically underinvest in the maintenance, renewal and improvement of the network.
That's the bloody problem. Injecting a little fresh water from desalination into a leaky network by importing natural gas for the necessary energy is a monumental waste.
Desalination is at the bottom of the list of things to be addressed.